He was eight years old, and it was one of the rare occasions when he was allowed to wander off from the squalid trailer where he and his father, Willie-Dean Tucker, lived. That day he came across a stray puppy wandering in the road. JB and the small dog had bonded instantly, and they had spent a few happy hours together before he brought it back to the trailer. But when he got there, Willie-Dean was drunk and even more foul-tempered than usual. As soon as he saw JB cradling the puppy in his arms, he seized it from JB's grasp. Willie-Dean held the dog and locked eyes with JB for a long moment before he said, "Hard enough to put food on the table without y'all bringin' me another hungry mouth to feed."
Then, without another word he snapped the helpless animal's neck with a single brutal motion. JB, helpless and horrified beyond all reason, could only burst into tears as his father flung the tiny corpse at his feet.
"Put it in the ground," Willie-Dean ordered. Heartbroken, JB buried his pet and piled rocks on its grave to keep the scavengers from getting to it. It was the night he decided he would never love anything, or anyone, again. The recollection was so intense that it was necessary for his Sawbonites to quell the bile rising in his throat.
Sometime later, Marvin got up from the table and went into his bedroom without another word. Not long after that, Jansky scratched at the back door letting JB know he needed to go out to do his business. JB figured he’d take off after he let the dog back in, but the more he thought about it, the idea of being off his pursuer’s radar, and lying low from the authorities became even more appealing. After Jansky returned, JB, frustrated and disappointed at the recent turn of events, laid down on the couch to contemplate his options. There weren't very many of them, and none were very appealing. He didn’t realize how exhausted he was until then. Minutes later, despite his efforts to forget his terrible past or dwell on his dismal future, he soon fell asleep.
At first, JB couldn't distinguish the dream from waking reality. He was perched somewhere high above the landscape below him. It was like a scene from an old Western movie, not that he had ever seen one, but the expanse before him stretched off in the distance through open flatlands, against the backdrop of what he vaguely recognized as the Black Mountains of Southern Appalachia.
There were seemingly infinite miles of unfinished railroad track as far as the eye could see. The rails were under construction by thousands of pigtailed Chinese immigrants wielding hammers and pick-axes. Looking closer, JB saw they were shackled, one to another; going about their labor with unnatural vigor, unfocused eyes, and mechanical precision. In the center of each man's chest was a metallic triangular object containing a smaller triangle in the middle glowing bright red.
He sensed something behind him and turned to see an alien, dressed nonsensically in an old-time railroad conductor's outfit. JB reacted defensively and instinctively, sheathing himself in his bio-armor, prepared for the imminent attack. Instead, the alien raised the lantern in its tentacles, almost comically, and announced in a voice with a Western twang, "Railroad comin' through!"
Then the locomotive came out of nowhere and ran him down.
CHAPTER FOUR
A new day
JB WOKE WITH a start, wide awake. Still puzzling over the strange dream, it took him a moment to realize that it was the next morning. The smell of coffee and bacon filled the room, and he rose off of the couch to see Marvin busy in the kitchen.
“So, you’re not going to sleep all day again after all,” Marvin said jovially.
“Guess not,” JB replied, sitting up. “You all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” The old man flatly replied, setting down two plates of scrambled eggs on the dinette table.
JB looked at him for a moment before deciding to let the matter drop. The episode had apparently passed, and Marvin seemed unwilling to acknowledge the issue.
“Jus’ askin’,” JB said, looking on the plates that Marvin had set down on the table. “If it’s all the same, I don't think I should be stayin' for breakfast."
"I think you should," Marvin replied. The humor in his voice had disappeared. "First off, it's already cooked and served. Second… As soon as you step outside this door, you'll be broadcasting your location to every alien out there that's looking for you."
What the old man had said was true, and the bacon and coffee also made his argument that much stronger. Unsurprisingly, JB relented and joined him at the table. "Havin' breakfast is one thing… but as far as the broadcastin’ thing, there ain't much I can do about that.”
Marvin, between sips of coffee, said, “That may not be true. I was up early and made a couple of tweaks to my instruments. After we eat, I’ll show you.”
JB, although puzzled at the abrupt change in his host’s personality from the day before, was curious. “What kind’a tweaks?”
“I told you yesterday that the detector was set up to scan and monitor the area outside. Well, I readjusted it so that now it’s reading your presence inside.”
“What for?” JB asked in-between mouthfuls. He was hungrier than he thought, despite the meager meal he had eaten yesterday.
“So you can try to get a handle on what your nano-bots are broadcasting.”
JB turned around and looked at the round, picture tube sitting on the workbench. Instead of the unbroken white lines that he saw yesterday, the display showed alternating jagged peaks and dips that were consistently in motion, moving across the screen.
“Is that what they’re sendin’ out?” he asked.
“Among other things,” Marvin replied. He pointed his fork at the screen and said, “You see that break between the alternating peaks? That’s a slight pause in the signal. And, as you can see, the pattern is repetitive.”
JB didn’t see anything of the sort; the undulating patterns on the screen made no sense to him at all. “Don’t know why they should be doin’ that,” he said.
“I don’t know either. But that signal has all the hallmarks of an alien signature. That’s why I mistook you for one and nearly killed you yesterday. Alien signals use a frequency completely removed from the broadcast spectrum. It’s a multiplexed microwave signal, that’s too short and usually too limited in range for most devices to detect.”
JB gave Marvin a blank look. “I’m sure I don’t got no idea ‘bout anything you just said.”
Marvin smiled as he replied. ”It means that without completely redesigning a bunch of detector circuits and amplifying the results, very few people on Earth would ever know they were there."
"I'm not sure how that's gonna help," JB wondered, now more confused than ever.
"Well, if you can control those things inside you like you said you could, you might be able to stop them from broadcasting… Right?” Marvin said, offering JB a slice of toast. "The monitor will show that."
“I guess that might work. Except I’m not sure how I'll get 'em to stop,” JB admitted. “I can do certain things jus’ by thinking about it. Other stuff kinda happens by itself.”
“Interesting,” Marvin replied. “Do you know what your “Sawbonites” actually are?”
“Yeah, sorta. I was told them things was put into most of the aliens that come down here for medical protection. But in my body, for some reason nobody knows, they do that an' a whole bunch more.”
Marvin raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You were told? By whom?”
“That there is a long story… But one alien, who was disguised as a human for a while, told me a whole lot o' stuff. Like how there’s two groups of aliens, who ain’t none too friendly with one another. One bunch, call themselves Har-Kankar, an’ them is the ones that want me dead. The other is called Har-Skela, an’ they want me to keep on killin’ them Har-Kankar aliens, so I foul up their plans, whatever they are. That ain’t hardly much of a stretch since they’ll kill me if I don’t kill them first. Anyways, we got a deal, for all that’s worth. If I keep up my end, then they promised me that Earth would be safe.”
Marvin’s expression grew more trouble
d as JB spoke, and yet, the look on his face revealed that nothing he had heard was too far-fetched or surprising. When JB had finished his explanation, Marvin asked, “So… Safe from what? Invasion, destruction?”
“They didn’t rightly say, but I ain’t got no choice, do I?”
“No, It doesn't sound like it.”
JB said, “At least, y’all ain’t callin’ me crazy."
"There's a few good reasons for that," Marvin said, sitting back in his chair. He took a deep breath before he continued. “I know about aliens… Not as much as you do evidently, but much of what you're saying isn't new as far as I'm concerned.
"In the late fifties, I graduated with several degrees. At that time, it was rare for a black man to have a multiple Master's degrees. Especially in emerging fields like in astrophysics, electronics engineering, and biochemistry. After I graduated from Cornell, I went to work for a secret division of the military they called the 'Airspace Threat Identification Program,' ATIP for short. I was part of a team that was tasked to investigate all reports and instances of unusual activity in the sky. They were expecting that most of the sightings were test aircraft being flown by either our allies or our enemies. That was why everything the division reported was top secret, but what we eventually discovered was completely contrary to anyone’s expectations.” Marvin paused before he added, “In fact, it was so explosive that the division was disbanded.”
“Oh yeah?” JB said, digging in. “Why was that?”
Marvin paused to take several bites out of his toast. “Because…” he said in between mouthfuls. “What we did find, scared the shit out of them!”
“What ‘xactly?" JB said, impatiently.
Marvin, pleased that JB’s attention was focused entirely on him, smiled before he continued. “I’ll get to that… As I said, people all over the country were reporting unexplained lights in the sky. At the time, the government thought the Russians or the Brits might be testing advanced aircraft. Our mission at that point was to figure out exactly what they were flying up there. But that was before the incident in New Mexico.”
Marvin laughed humorlessly. “It turned the whole program on its head. I think it was around 1951… A rancher found what he thought was a meteor in the desert. He brought it over to the local sheriff’s station thinking they’d know what to do with it. Exactly what happened next is still a mystery, but not long after he turned it in, the entire station house and everyone in it was wiped off the face of the earth. I mean, it was like the building never existed… But, something must have gone wrong, because…” He paused again for dramatic effect before he said, “An ET got left behind.”
“What the hell is an ET?” JB asked.
“Really?” Marvin replied incredulously. “Man, do you have a lot to learn. ET stands for extra-terrestrial… Meaning alien.”
“I hardly had any schoolin’, so I never heard that before,” JB said, without a shred of embarrassment. “So, was it alive?”
“Yes, but only barely. For whatever reason, it got stuck out in the desert. A couple of guys from the Army Core of Engineers who were decommissioning an airstrip nearby stumbled on it. They first thought it was a giant squid… The best explanation they could come up with was that it was part of a seafood shipment that fell out of an airplane. But on closer examination they discovered it was, A: Not dead and B: Absolutely not a squid. After the core-men called in a description, they were ordered to wrap it in a tarp and bring it back to base… Without talking to anyone."
"Our team was among those that were brought down hours later. We set up shop inside an old hanger and as poorly equipped as we were, we were able to determine that the organism was probably extra-terrestrial in origin. Naturally, the military decided at that point to take over the operation. Fortunately, we had a little time to examine the thing before some idiot decided it was a good idea to dissect it. You can guess what happened then."
“I’m guessin’ it evaporated into goo as soon it died.”
“Damn right it did. But, before that happened we were able to get some decent readings on its biometrics and some other information.”
“I wonder why its Sawbonites didn’t protect it?” JB said. “They’re supposed to fix them aliens up whenever they get hurt!”
“Sawbonites? Oh, yeah I forgot that’s what you call your nano-bots. At the time we didn't have the equipment to detect anything that small, but we did stumble onto that broadcast signature, like the one you were transmitting. But the signal stopped shortly after we discovered it. Knowing what I know now, I’d say its Sawbonites had worn out.”
“Y’all mean like their batteries died?”
"That's a good analogy," Marvin replied.
JB stopped shoveling eggs into his mouth. "Y'all think mine could wear out too?"
“Could happen eventually, but you've managed to replenish your little guys by absorbing new ones from all the ETs you've killed.”
"I 'pose that if I stop gettin' new Sawbonites, mine'll go dead too… Wonder what would happen to me then?"
"Hard to speculate," Marvin said. He grew more serious as he added, "You could end up normal, like anybody else. Or…"
JB finished the sentence for him. "Or I'll die, 'long with 'em."
"Don't know. Hopefully, you'll be just fine."
“So, what happened after the alien dissolved away?” JB asked, dismissing the dark scenarios that were edging themselves into his consciousness.
“Well, by then, the military was beginning to panic. The public was reporting more unexplained sightings and the powers that be decided to lock down our team in a research facility near Langley, Virginia. All they told our families was that we were assigned to a top secret mission. We were allowed supervised visits and limited leave, but that place was a prison nevertheless."
"This went on until the early sixties. All during that time, we were analyzing data from our orbiting satellites and other sources, some of which were so secret that we were never told how we came by the information. After putting together all of the bits and pieces of data, it was impossible to ignore the conclusion that extra-terrestrial activities were occurring on the very doorstep of our galaxy. But, the kicker was, that we never got to figure out exactly what that was because not long after that we were shut down."
“That don’t make no sense,” JB said.
“Of course not! At first, I thought The government didn’t want to shake up things, especially after the Korean War. But now I think they continued the project with fresh blood.”
“So they fired y'all?”
“I guess they had their reasons," Marvin said bitterly. "I do know though, that our findings were what kicked the space program into high gear. Even the Russians knew! Sputnik, Vostok and the other early orbital launches were probably reconnaissance missions. Back then, telescopes weren't powerful enough for astronomers to get a good enough look from the ground at what was really going on out there. Nowadays, I'm sure that we have tech that can produce a much clearer picture of that activity, and I'm equally sure it's being monitored… And kept under wraps.”
“Well, do y'all have any idea what it could be?”
Marvin spat out a harsh laugh and said, “Me? Only pure speculation on my part, but I’ve always been of the opinion that something is being built out on the fringes of our galaxy. Something big… Very big.”
JB thought about that as Marvin got up from the table and shoveled what was left of his breakfast into Jansky's bowl. The Lab immediately came over and began to eat.
"You did a good job training him," JB said, while the dog made short work of Marvin's leftover eggs.
“Hell, I didn't train him. He just showed up here one day and marched in like he owned the place. I named him after a radio-astronomy term, and he's been here ever since."
JB got up from the table and added his leftovers to Jansky's bowl. He walked over to where the large screen was and watched the display as it fluctuated. "So Marvin, y'all need t' gimme a clue… what am I su
ppost t' do with that monitor thingy?"
“Use it as a simple bio-feedback monitor. That way you can see when you've stopped your nano-bots from broadcasting."
"Bio-feedback? What all's that?"
"It's just a way of seeing if what you're doing is working or not. While you're working on getting control of your nano-bots, keep your eye on that screen. When you get them to stop transmitting, that sweep will turn into a solid unbroken line.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” JB replied. “But, honestly, I’m not sure where t' begin.”
“That's something I can’t help you with, son. But, if you keep at it long enough, I'll bet you can probably get it right."
"I guess I won't be leavin' right yet, then," JB said, taking a seat on the couch.
"I thought you might say that," Marvin said, a wry smile on his face. "I hope this will help. Glad to know all of this is finally good for something."
JB looked around again at the stacks of electronic gear with a new appreciation. "How do y'all build this stuff?" he asked.
Marvin smiled, clearly proud of his work. "Recycled electronics, E-Bay and Amazon for parts. Crude, but functional."
"I'd say so… Now, I reckon, it's up to me to see if I can figure out how t' make my Sawbonites stop callin' home," JB said, eyeing the continuing activity on the display.
"Go ahead and take your time. While you work on that, Jansky and I will take a walk into town and get some shopping done. Assuming you'll be staying for supper, we'll need a few more groceries,” Marvin said. From his tone of voice, he seemed pleased with the prospect of company. "We won't be long.”
“Wait… Here, please take this,” JB said, reaching into the front pocket of his jeans. He pulled out the wad of cash that Colin Trench had handed him before they parted ways. He had only glanced at it before, and now on closer inspection, he was surprised to see the large denominations on many of the bills. He pulled off a fifty and handed it to Marvin. “I owe y’all my life, an' if this thing works, a whole lot more. Least I can do is t' pay my own way.”
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